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March 6, 20223 Biggest Disasters In IT History. Technology has transformed the dimensions of life. Every aspect of life has been changed positively. The massive IT revolution has impacted every sphere of life. But there are certain risks associated with IT. Sometimes these risks become potential threats that turn out to be disasters.
IT has also seen some huge disasters in history. Sometimes the defect in hardware or software creates a disaster that is so devastating. There are many such examples in history where IT has witnessed the biggest of disasters resulting in huge financial losses. Here we shall discuss a few of the prominent IT disasters in history has shaken the industry of information technology.
3 Biggest Disasters In IT History
Soviet Warning System:
It has been said widely that WWIII would be in the field of cyber security. A similar thing happened in the year 1983 when the Soviet missile detection systems triggered a message that the US has launched five ballistic missiles. The Soviet officer who was on duty thought promptly that he will launch more than five ballistic missiles if the US attacked the Soviet Union.
After inspecting the warning systems, it was revealed that there is a software bug in the warning system that has misinterpreted and given the information of false ballistic missiles because of the sunlight reflections off cloud-tops.
AT&T Network Collapse:
History tells us that in the year 1990, there were about 75 million phone calls in the United States that were not answered in due time. It was because of the mechanical error in a single switch that caused the shutdown of the entire Centre. It was a minor problem and when the center came into operation in a little time,
the message was sent to other centers from the center that caused the tripping of other centers and they all got shut down. This was because of a minor error in the lines from where the signal is passed. There were no hackers behind but an error occurred during the upgradation of highly complex software causing eventually the network to collapse.
Explosion Of Ariane 5:
This incident occurred in the year 1995 when Europe launched an unmanned satellite-launching rocket but it was blown up right after a few seconds of the flight. There was a whole guidance system behind the rocket that guides the unmanned satellite launching rocket to flow in a particular direction with a particular speed.
The error occurred in the guiding system while converting the huge figure of 64-bit to 16-bit format. As a result, the overflow error occurred causing a delay and shutdown of the system. There was a backup system in place to operate in such a condition but the back system failed similarly due to an overflow error and it also got shut down in milliseconds.
The identical error occurred in the back system because both the guiding system itself and its backup were running on the same software and the error was in the software causing an early explosion of the launching rocket.
Airbus A380:
The problem of compatibility of software comes in the airline Airbus A380 in the year 2006. This issue should be considered by every company that sometimes one program does not interact with another program. This is the situation in which there exists an issue in both halves of the program that hinders the interaction between them.
The problem came when the German and French systems used different versions of software in a way that the German company used an out dates version of the software while the French company was using the latest version. Both versions were incompatible with each other.
The function of the airbus was to join both halves of two programs but due to software incompatibility, the wiring in both software does not match with each other. There was a dire condition of changing the cable wires in order to get connected. Eventually, the problem was figured out but there was a huge cost that companies incurred.
Mars Climate Observer:
There was a space program in 1998 that was designed to study the climate, weather, water, and carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. In order to execute this space program, two aircraft were used called Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander.
Soon after the launch of the aircraft, there occurred a navigation error that caused the speed of the air crafts slow and eventually, it got destroyed. The navigation error was caused due to the inaccurate use of units as the contractor did not use the NASA-specified units. Instead, he used imperial units that were practiced in the United States.
Explosion Of Laptops:
The year 2006 witnessed another explosion and that was of laptops. It was a trade show in Japan when a Dell laptop busted into fire apparently due to catching fire. As a result of the investigation, it was brought out that the main cause
of the explosion of Dell laptops is the battery/power supply of an individual laptop that resulted in overheating of the laptop and it bursting into fire. Such errors may also come in titan repacking kits if they are placed under heat for excessive time.
